Overwatch adds health bars to spectator mode

Looking healthy.

With so much going on at once, keeping track of who's who and, crucially, who's winning in Overwatch esports matches is of paramount importance when viewing in third-person spectator mode. Until now, the absence of health bars above player avatars meant reading matches could get confusing in that it wasn't always immediately obvious which team was winning and how players were faring on the battlefield. Newly introduced to the PTR, health bars have now been added for all players.

As shown below by YouTube and esports person Doa, floating health bars can now be toggled on and off with the click of a button, in turn instantaneously offering a better sense of how individual players are handling each set-to.

"I think this is going to help casting quite a bit in some of these bigger fights," says Doa above. "You can tell the narrative of the fight a little bit more, you can see who's getting lower. Poor Zenyatta, will he live through the fight? It's so exciting now because I can actually look at the fight and the life bars at the same time without going back and forth between the characters in the middle of the screen and the life bars up the top—I can keep my eye on the action, I can keep my eye on the health at the same time."

Zenyatta does not live, sadly for him, however realising how close to death he is before he ultimately cops it is certainly much easier to grasp now. Again, this feature is currently on the PTR, however Doa reckons it'll be made live sooner rather than later.